According to the information technology (IT) industry terminology, a business object (BO) could be defined as a uniquely identifiable business entity. In the context of a private computing environment, the existing business objects represent the entities in a business domain supported by one or more business applications. Business applications deliver application services to consumers based on the business objects. The business applications are traditionally implemented on top of application platforms that provide software basis for the different application services. The application platforms also provide a variety of infrastructure services, e.g., user interfaces, report generation, business object repositories, software logistics and lifecycle management, persistency abstraction, etc. Generally, the application platforms are developed and marketed by different software vendors. Proprietary application platforms are implemented in many private computing environments as well.
Often, application platforms, including the proprietary application platforms, are developed to provide business functionality that is applicable for small, medium, and large-sized business environments. Therefore, the business objects that are presented within an application platform need to correspond to the most complex business domain target group. The BOs existing in such universal application platforms contain more functionality than small and medium-sized companies really need. Part of the unnecessary functionality could be “hidden” behind adjustable business configuration or behind predefined user interfaces. However, the entire functionality of the application platform, including the whole complexity of the BOs, would be visible in various use-cases, especially in Flexibility and Extensibility scenarios, e.g., Ad hoc reporting, UI extensibility, etc. The task of limiting a consumer domain to access a narrower scope of the functionality presented by an application platform could require substantial resources, and could cause tradeoff in terms of performance and maintenance.